The World's Fastest Electric Car From Shelby Supercars

27/01/2009

It’s called the Ultimate Aero EV (for Electric Vehicle). Shelby SuperCars claims that it has engineered its own scalable electric powertrain that can provide the juice for outputs ranging from 200bhp to 1200bhp. That is a LOT of rocket power considering that Tesla’s own Roadster Sport has just announced a 288bhp engine.

Of course, having built the world’s fastest production car in the 255mph Ultimate Aero last summer and announcing a 270mph petrol version this year, Shelby SuperCars isn’t just shadow boxing or lollygagging about this stuff.

The 1000bhp-plus engines it will build will be reserved for commercial and military vehicles; the American company plans to sell the technology to other vehicle manufacturers. The Aero EV will probably settle for 500bhp and 821lb ft of torque of sweet electric power, coming from twin three-phase AC motors. The powertrain for the electric car will weigh around 90kg and recharge in just 10 minutes on a standard 110 volt power outlet, according to Shelby. That charge will be good for a 200 mile range A bit too optimistic?

SSC claims that it will begin test runs of the Aero EV by next month and unveil the production car by the summer. Though it seems too good to be true, SSC has already proven that when it sets out to achieve something outrageous, it very well succeeds. We’ll see if it does again in the summer.